Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!lll-crg.llnl.gov!painter
From: painter@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Jeff Painter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.super
Subject: Re: Generating Source Code out of Algebra
Message-ID: <67039@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 24 Aug 90 17:29:58 GMT
References: <1116@camme.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 41

In article <1116@camme.UUCP> cammerdl@camme.UUCP () writes:
>On our site, lots of scientists are developping modeling programs to
>simulate all kinds of hydrodynamical systems like oil-slick evolution,
>wave-height predictions, etc.
>The problem for these guys, as for all scientists using computers I guess,
>is that they are stuck to that little bit of programming languages they
>know : FORTRAN. Creating code that runs under every input data, produces
>results, or even results that might be correct, takes several weeks per
>tiny peace of code.
>I was thinking that the biggest problem for them is : converting their
>(often genious) algebra-solutions for a given model, into some
>programming language like FORTRAN they're not used to 'speak'.
>
>Therefore I'd like to ask for opinions about this problem, and if someone
>has developped or has under development such algebra-syntax parser/code
>generator.

Most symbolic algebra programs have some sort of primitive Fortran
generator; i.e. they can generate one line (plus continuation lines)
of unoptimized Fortran from a scalar expression.  It's easy to do that
much; after all, Fortran was originally designed for that.

Many people have gone a lot further than that.  Grant Cook, I, and
others are involved in one such effort.  For details see Grant Cook's
paper "ALPAL, a Program to Generate Physics Simulation Codes from
Natural Descriptions", in the first issue of International Journal of
Modern Physics C.  The references should help track down some of the
other efforts in this area.

ALPAL is built on Macsyma, and Grant Cook substantially improved
Macsyma code generation capability to support it.  A few of these
extensions are available with the DOE-Macsyma version of Macsyma, from
the National Energy Software Center in Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA.

There are not any advanced codes in this area which exploit the power
of large symbolic algebra programs and which I could recommend as
being freely available, general-purpose, and fully engineered beyond
the research level.
Jeffrey F. Painter			painter@lll-crg.llnl.gov
L-316, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory	415-422-0675, FTS 532-0675
Livermore CA  94550   USA               415-423-7613, FTS 543-7613